The JoVE video player is compatible with HTML5 and Adobe Flash. Older browsers that do not support HTML5 and the H.264 video codec will still use a Flash-based video player. We recommend downloading the newest version of Flash here, but we support all versions 10 and above.

Since many proteins express their functional activity by interacting with other proteins and forming protein complexes, it is very useful to identify sets of proteins that form complexes. For that purpose, many prediction methods for protein complexes from protein-protein interactions have been developed such as MCL, MCODE, RNSC, PCP, RRW, and NWE. These methods have dealt with only complexes with size of more than three because the methods often are based on some density of subgraphs. However, heterodimeric protein complexes that consist of two distinct proteins occupy a large part according to several comprehensive databases of known complexes. In this paper, we propose several feature space mappings from protein-protein interaction data, in which each interaction is weighted based on reliability. Furthermore, we make use of prior knowledge on protein domains to develop feature space mappings, domain composition kernel and its combination kernel with our proposed features. We perform ten-fold cross-validation computational experiments. These results suggest that our proposed kernel considerably outperforms the naive Bayes-based method, which is the best existing method for predicting heterodimeric protein complexes.

The aim of de novo protein design is to find the amino acid sequences that will fold into a desired 3-dimensional structure with improvements in specific properties, such as binding affinity, agonist or antagonist behavior, or stability, relative to the native sequence. Protein design lies at the center of current advances drug design and discovery. Not only does protein design provide predictions for potentially useful drug targets, but it also enhances our understanding of the protein folding process and protein-protein interactions. Experimental methods such as directed evolution have shown success in protein design. However, such methods are restricted by the limited sequence space that can be searched tractably. In contrast, computational design strategies allow for the screening of a much larger set of sequences covering a wide variety of properties and functionality. We have developed a range of computational de novo protein design methods capable of tackling several important areas of protein design. These include the design of monomeric proteins for increased stability and complexes for increased binding affinity.
To disseminate these methods for broader use we present Protein WISDOM (http://www.proteinwisdom.org), a tool that provides automated methods for a variety of protein design problems. Structural templates are submitted to initialize the design process. The first stage of design is an optimization sequence selection stage that aims at improving stability through minimization of potential energy in the sequence space. Selected sequences are then run through a fold specificity stage and a binding affinity stage. A rank-ordered list of the sequences for each step of the process, along with relevant designed structures, provides the user with a comprehensive quantitative assessment of the design. Here we provide the details of each design method, as well as several notable experimental successes attained through the use of the methods.

24 Related JoVE Articles!

Play Button

Bimolecular Fluorescence Complementation

Authors: Katy A. Wong, John P. O'Bryan.

Institutions: University of Illinois at Chicago.

Defining the subcellular distribution of signaling complexes is imperative to understanding the output from that complex.Conventional methods such as immunoprecipitation do not provide information on the spatial localization of complexes. In contrast, BiFC monitors the interaction and subcellular compartmentalization of protein complexes. In this method, a fluororescent protein is split into amino- and carboxy-terminal non-fluorescent fragments which are then fused to two proteins of interest. Interaction of the proteins results in reconstitution of the fluorophore (Figure 1)1,2. A limitation of BiFC is that once the fragmented fluorophore is reconstituted the complex is irreversible3. This limitation is advantageous in detecting transient or weak interactions, but precludes a kinetic analysis of complex dynamics. An additional caveat is that the reconstituted flourophore requires 30min to mature and fluoresce, again precluding the observation of real time interactions4. BiFC is a specific example of the protein fragment complementation assay (PCA) which employs reporter proteins such as green fluorescent protein variants (BiFC), dihydrofolate reductase, b-lactamase, and luciferase to measure protein:protein interactions5,6. Alternative methods to study protein:protein interactions in cells include fluorescence co-localization and Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET)7. For co-localization, two proteins are individually tagged either directly with a fluorophore or by indirect immunofluorescence. However, this approach leads to high background of non-interacting proteins making it difficult to interpret co-localization data. In addition, due to the limits of resolution of confocal microscopy, two proteins may appear co-localized without necessarily interacting. With BiFC, fluorescence is only observed when the two proteins of interest interact. FRET is another excellent method for studying protein:protein interactions, but can be technically challenging. FRET experiments require the donor and acceptor to be of similar brightness and stoichiometry in the cell. In addition, one must account for bleed through of the donor into the acceptor channel and vice versa. Unlike FRET, BiFC has little background fluorescence, little post processing of image data, does not require high overexpression, and can detect weak or transient interactions. Bioluminescence resonance energy transfer (BRET) is a method similar to FRET except the donor is an enzyme (e.g. luciferase) that catalyzes a substrate to become bioluminescent thereby exciting an acceptor. BRET lacks the technical problems of bleed through and high background fluorescence but lacks the ability to provide spatial information due to the lack of substrate localization to specific compartments8. Overall, BiFC is an excellent method for visualizing subcellular localization of protein complexes to gain insight into compartmentalized signaling.

The dynamic nature of cellular machineries is frequently built on transient and/or weak protein associations. These low affinity interactions preclude stringent methods for the isolation and identification of protein networks around a protein of interest. The use of chemical crosslinkers allows the selective stabilization of labile interactions, thus bypassing biochemical limitations for purification. Here we present a protocol amenable for cells in culture that uses a homobifunctional crosslinker with a spacer arm of 12 Å, dithiobis-(succinimidyl proprionate) (DSP). DSP is cleaved by reduction of a disulphide bond present in the molecule. Cross-linking combined with immunoaffinity chromatography of proteins of interest with magnetic beads allows the isolation of protein complexes that otherwise would not withstand purification. This protocol is compatible with regular western blot techniques and it can be scaled up for protein identification by mass spectrometry1.
Stephanie A. Zlatic and Pearl V. Ryder contributed equally to this work.

Membrane-SPINE: A Biochemical Tool to Identify Protein-protein Interactions of Membrane Proteins In Vivo

Authors: Volker Steffen Müller, Karolin Tschauner, Sabine Hunke.

Institutions: Universität Osnabrück.

Membrane proteins are essential for cell viability and are therefore important therapeutic targets1-3. Since they function in complexes4, methods to identify and characterize their interactions are necessary5. To this end, we developed the Membrane Strep-protein interaction experiment, called Membrane-SPINE6. This technique combines in vivo cross-linking using the reversible cross-linker formaldehyde with affinity purification of a Strep-tagged membrane bait protein. During the procedure, cross-linked prey proteins are co-purified with the membrane bait protein and subsequently separated by boiling. Hence, two major tasks can be executed when analyzing protein-protein interactions (PPIs) of membrane proteins using Membrane-SPINE: first, the confirmation of a proposed interaction partner by immunoblotting, and second, the identification of new interaction partners by mass spectrometry analysis. Moreover, even low affinity, transient PPIs are detectable by this technique. Finally, Membrane-SPINE is adaptable to almost any cell type, making it applicable as a powerful screening tool to identify PPIs of membrane proteins.

Multidrug resistance (MDR), the ability of a cancer cell or pathogen to be resistant to a wide range of structurally and functionally unrelated anti-cancer drugs or antibiotics, is a current serious problem in public health. This multidrug resistance is largely due to energy-dependent drug efflux pumps. The pumps expel anti-cancer drugs or antibiotics into the external medium, lowering their intracellular concentration below a toxic threshold. We are studying multidrug resistance in Pseudomonas aeruginosa, an opportunistic bacterial pathogen that causes infections in patients with many types of injuries or illness, for example, burns or cystic fibrosis, and also in immuno-compromised cancer, dialysis, and transplantation patients. The major MDR efflux pumps in P. aeruginosa are tripartite complexes comprised of an inner membrane proton-drug antiporter (RND), an outer membrane channel (OMF), and a periplasmic linker protein (MFP) 1-8. The RND and OMF proteins are transmembrane proteins. Transmembrane proteins make up more than 30% of all proteins and are 65% of current drug targets. The hydrophobic transmembrane domains make the proteins insoluble in aqueous buffer. Before a transmembrane protein can be purified, it is necessary to find buffer conditions containing a mild detergent that enable the protein to be solubilized as a protein detergent complex (PDC) 9-11. In this example, we use an RND protein, the P. aeruginosa MexB transmembrane transporter, to demonstrate how to express a recombinant form of a transmembrane protein, solubilize it using detergents, and then purify the protein detergent complexes. This general method can be applied to the expression, purification, and solubilization of many other recombinantly expressed membrane proteins. The protein detergent complexes can later be used for biochemical or biophysical characterization including X-ray crystal structure determination or crosslinking studies.

Immunoprecipitation detected by flow cytometry (IP-FCM) is an efficient method for detecting and quantifying protein-protein interactions. The basic principle extends that of sandwich ELISA, wherein the captured primary analyte can be detected together with other molecules physically associated within multiprotein complexes. The procedure involves covalent coupling of polystyrene latex microbeads with immunoprecipitating monoclonal antibodies (mAb) specific for a protein of interest, incubating these beads with cell lysates, probing captured protein complexes with fluorochrome-conjugated probes, and analyzing bead-associated fluorescence by flow cytometry. IP-FCM is extremely sensitive, allows analysis of proteins in their native (non-denatured) state, and is amenable to either semi-quantitative or quantitative analysis. As additional advantages, IP-FCM requires no genetic engineering or specialized equipment, other than a flow cytometer, and it can be readily adapted for high-throughput applications.

A Protocol for Computer-Based Protein Structure and Function Prediction

Authors: Ambrish Roy, Dong Xu, Jonathan Poisson, Yang Zhang.

Institutions: University of Michigan , University of Kansas.

Genome sequencing projects have ciphered millions of protein sequence, which require knowledge of their structure and function to improve the understanding of their biological role. Although experimental methods can provide detailed information for a small fraction of these proteins, computational modeling is needed for the majority of protein molecules which are experimentally uncharacterized. The I-TASSER server is an on-line workbench for high-resolution modeling of protein structure and function. Given a protein sequence, a typical output from the I-TASSER server includes secondary structure prediction, predicted solvent accessibility of each residue, homologous template proteins detected by threading and structure alignments, up to five full-length tertiary structural models, and structure-based functional annotations for enzyme classification, Gene Ontology terms and protein-ligand binding sites. All the predictions are tagged with a confidence score which tells how accurate the predictions are without knowing the experimental data. To facilitate the special requests of end users, the server provides channels to accept user-specified inter-residue distance and contact maps to interactively change the I-TASSER modeling; it also allows users to specify any proteins as template, or to exclude any template proteins during the structure assembly simulations. The structural information could be collected by the users based on experimental evidences or biological insights with the purpose of improving the quality of I-TASSER predictions. The server was evaluated as the best programs for protein structure and function predictions in the recent community-wide CASP experiments. There are currently >20,000 registered scientists from over 100 countries who are using the on-line I-TASSER server.

Perceptual and Category Processing of the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis' Dimension of Human Likeness: Some Methodological Issues

Authors: Marcus Cheetham, Lutz Jancke.

Institutions: University of Zurich.

Mori's Uncanny Valley Hypothesis1,2 proposes that the perception of humanlike characters such as robots and, by extension, avatars (computer-generated characters) can evoke negative or positive affect (valence) depending on the object's degree of visual and behavioral realism along a dimension of human likeness (DHL) (Figure 1). But studies of affective valence of subjective responses to variously realistic non-human characters have produced inconsistent findings 3, 4, 5, 6. One of a number of reasons for this is that human likeness is not perceived as the hypothesis assumes. While the DHL can be defined following Mori's description as a smooth linear change in the degree of physical humanlike similarity, subjective perception of objects along the DHL can be understood in terms of the psychological effects of categorical perception (CP) 7. Further behavioral and neuroimaging investigations of category processing and CP along the DHL and of the potential influence of the dimension's underlying category structure on affective experience are needed. This protocol therefore focuses on the DHL and allows examination of CP. Based on the protocol presented in the video as an example, issues surrounding the methodology in the protocol and the use in "uncanny" research of stimuli drawn from morph continua to represent the DHL are discussed in the article that accompanies the video. The use of neuroimaging and morph stimuli to represent the DHL in order to disentangle brain regions neurally responsive to physical human-like similarity from those responsive to category change and category processing is briefly illustrated.

Institutions: University of Toronto, University of Regina, University of Toronto.

Since most cellular processes are mediated by macromolecular assemblies, the systematic identification of protein-protein interactions (PPI) and the identification of the subunit composition of multi-protein complexes can provide insight into gene function and enhance understanding of biological systems1, 2. Physical interactions can be mapped with high confidence vialarge-scale isolation and characterization of endogenous protein complexes under near-physiological conditions based on affinity purification of chromosomally-tagged proteins in combination with mass spectrometry (APMS). This approach has been successfully applied in evolutionarily diverse organisms, including yeast, flies, worms, mammalian cells, and bacteria1-6. In particular, we have generated a carboxy-terminal Sequential Peptide Affinity (SPA) dual tagging system for affinity-purifying native protein complexes from cultured gram-negative Escherichia coli, using genetically-tractable host laboratory strains that are well-suited for genome-wide investigations of the fundamental biology and conserved processes of prokaryotes1, 2, 7. Our SPA-tagging system is analogous to the tandem affinity purification method developed originally for yeast8, 9, and consists of a calmodulin binding peptide (CBP) followed by the cleavage site for the highly specific tobacco etch virus (TEV) protease and three copies of the FLAG epitope (3X FLAG), allowing for two consecutive rounds of affinity enrichment. After cassette amplification, sequence-specific linear PCR products encoding the SPA-tag and a selectable marker are integrated and expressed in frame as carboxy-terminal fusions in a DY330 background that is induced to transiently express a highly efficient heterologous bacteriophage lambda recombination system10. Subsequent dual-step purification using calmodulin and anti-FLAG affinity beads enables the highly selective and efficient recovery of even low abundance protein complexes from large-scale cultures. Tandem mass spectrometry is then used to identify the stably co-purifying proteins with high sensitivity (low nanogram detection limits).
Here, we describe detailed step-by-step procedures we commonly use for systematic protein tagging, purification and mass spectrometry-based analysis of soluble protein complexes from E. coli, which can be scaled up and potentially tailored to other bacterial species, including certain opportunistic pathogens that are amenable to recombineering. The resulting physical interactions can often reveal interesting unexpected components and connections suggesting novel mechanistic links. Integration of the PPI data with alternate molecular association data such as genetic (gene-gene) interactions and genomic-context (GC) predictions can facilitate elucidation of the global molecular organization of multi-protein complexes within biological pathways. The networks generated for E. coli can be used to gain insight into the functional architecture of orthologous gene products in other microbes for which functional annotations are currently lacking.

We describe experimental and statistical steps for creating dopamine movies of the brain from dynamic PET data. The movies represent minute-to-minute fluctuations of dopamine induced by smoking a cigarette. The smoker is imaged during a natural smoking experience while other possible confounding effects (such as head motion, expectation, novelty, or aversion to smoking repeatedly) are minimized.
We present the details of our unique analysis. Conventional methods for PET analysis estimate time-invariant kinetic model parameters which cannot capture short-term fluctuations in neurotransmitter release. Our analysis - yielding a dopamine movie - is based on our work with kinetic models and other decomposition techniques that allow for time-varying parameters 1-7. This aspect of the analysis - temporal-variation - is key to our work. Because our model is also linear in parameters, it is practical, computationally, to apply at the voxel level. The analysis technique is comprised of five main steps: pre-processing, modeling, statistical comparison, masking and visualization. Preprocessing is applied to the PET data with a unique 'HYPR' spatial filter 8 that reduces spatial noise but preserves critical temporal information. Modeling identifies the time-varying function that best describes the dopamine effect on 11C-raclopride uptake. The statistical step compares the fit of our (lp-ntPET) model 7 to a conventional model 9. Masking restricts treatment to those voxels best described by the new model. Visualization maps the dopamine function at each voxel to a color scale and produces a dopamine movie. Interim results and sample dopamine movies of cigarette smoking are presented.

The analysis of lipid protein interaction is difficult because lipids are embedded in cell membranes and therefore, inaccessible to most purification procedures. As an alternative, lipids can be coated on flat surfaces as used for lipid ELISA and Plasmon resonance spectroscopy. However, surface coating lipids do not form microdomain structures, which may be important for the lipid binding properties. Further, these methods do not allow for the purification of larger amounts of proteins binding to their target lipids.
To overcome these limitations of testing lipid protein interaction and to purify lipid binding proteins we developed a novel method termed lipid vesicle-mediated affinity chromatography using magnetic-activated cell sorting (LIMACS). In this method, lipid vesicles are prepared with the target lipid and phosphatidylserine as the anchor lipid for Annexin V MACS. Phosphatidylserine is a ubiquitous cell membrane phospholipid that shows high affinity to the protein Annexin V. Using magnetic beads conjugated to Annexin V the phosphatidylserine-containing lipid vesicles will bind to the magnetic beads. When the lipid vesicles are incubated with a cell lysate the protein binding to the target lipid will also be bound to the beads and can be co-purified using MACS. This method can also be used to test if recombinant proteins reconstitute a protein complex binding to the target lipid.
We have used this method to show the interaction of atypical PKC (aPKC) with the sphingolipid ceramide and to co-purify prostate apoptosis response 4 (PAR-4), a protein binding to ceramide-associated aPKC. We have also used this method for the reconstitution of a ceramide-associated complex of recombinant aPKC with the cell polarity-related proteins Par6 and Cdc42. Since lipid vesicles can be prepared with a variety of sphingo- or phospholipids, LIMACS offers a versatile test for lipid-protein interaction in a lipid environment that resembles closely that of the cell membrane. Additional lipid protein complexes can be identified using proteomics analysis of lipid binding protein co-purified with the lipid vesicles.

Detection of Protein Interactions in Plant using a Gateway Compatible Bimolecular Fluorescence Complementation (BiFC) System

Authors: Gang Tian, Qing Lu, Li Zhang, Susanne E. Kohalmi, Yuhai Cui.

Institutions: University of Western Ontario, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

We have developed a BiFC technique to test the interaction between two proteins in vivo. This is accomplished by splitting a yellow fluorescent protein (YFP) into two non-overlapping fragments. Each fragment is cloned in-frame to a gene of interest. These constructs can then be co-transformed into Nicotiana benthamiana via Agrobacterium mediated transformation, allowing the transit expression of fusion proteins. The reconstitution of YFP signal only occurs when the inquest proteins interact 1-7. To test and validate the protein-protein interactions, BiFC can be used together with yeast two hybrid (Y2H) assay. This may detect indirect interactions which can be overlooked in the Y2H. Gateway technology is a universal platform that enables researchers to shuttle the gene of interest (GOI) into as many expression and functional analysis systems as possible8,9. Both the orientation and reading frame can be maintained without using restriction enzymes or ligation to make expression-ready clones. As a result, one can eliminate all the re-sequencing steps to ensure consistent results throughout the experiments. We have created a series of Gateway compatible BiFC and Y2H vectors which provide researchers with easy-to-use tools to perform both BiFC and Y2H assays10. Here, we demonstrate the ease of using our BiFC system to test protein-protein interactions in N. benthamiana plants.

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) techniques provide information on the microstructural processes of the cerebral white matter (WM) in vivo. The present applications are designed to investigate differences of WM involvement patterns in different brain diseases, especially neurodegenerative disorders, by use of different DTI analyses in comparison with matched controls.
DTI data analysis is performed in a variate fashion, i.e. voxelwise comparison of regional diffusion direction-based metrics such as fractional anisotropy (FA), together with fiber tracking (FT) accompanied by tractwise fractional anisotropy statistics (TFAS) at the group level in order to identify differences in FA along WM structures, aiming at the definition of regional patterns of WM alterations at the group level. Transformation into a stereotaxic standard space is a prerequisite for group studies and requires thorough data processing to preserve directional inter-dependencies. The present applications show optimized technical approaches for this preservation of quantitative and directional information during spatial normalization in data analyses at the group level. On this basis, FT techniques can be applied to group averaged data in order to quantify metrics information as defined by FT. Additionally, application of DTI methods, i.e. differences in FA-maps after stereotaxic alignment, in a longitudinal analysis at an individual subject basis reveal information about the progression of neurological disorders. Further quality improvement of DTI based results can be obtained during preprocessing by application of a controlled elimination of gradient directions with high noise levels.
In summary, DTI is used to define a distinct WM pathoanatomy of different brain diseases by the combination of whole brain-based and tract-based DTI analysis.

Modern 3D electron microscopy approaches have recently allowed unprecedented insight into the 3D ultrastructural organization of cells and tissues, enabling the visualization of large macromolecular machines, such as adhesion complexes, as well as higher-order structures, such as the cytoskeleton and cellular organelles in their respective cell and tissue context. Given the inherent complexity of cellular volumes, it is essential to first extract the features of interest in order to allow visualization, quantification, and therefore comprehension of their 3D organization. Each data set is defined by distinct characteristics, e.g., signal-to-noise ratio, crispness (sharpness) of the data, heterogeneity of its features, crowdedness of features, presence or absence of characteristic shapes that allow for easy identification, and the percentage of the entire volume that a specific region of interest occupies. All these characteristics need to be considered when deciding on which approach to take for segmentation.
The six different 3D ultrastructural data sets presented were obtained by three different imaging approaches: resin embedded stained electron tomography, focused ion beam- and serial block face- scanning electron microscopy (FIB-SEM, SBF-SEM) of mildly stained and heavily stained samples, respectively. For these data sets, four different segmentation approaches have been applied: (1) fully manual model building followed solely by visualization of the model, (2) manual tracing segmentation of the data followed by surface rendering, (3) semi-automated approaches followed by surface rendering, or (4) automated custom-designed segmentation algorithms followed by surface rendering and quantitative analysis. Depending on the combination of data set characteristics, it was found that typically one of these four categorical approaches outperforms the others, but depending on the exact sequence of criteria, more than one approach may be successful. Based on these data, we propose a triage scheme that categorizes both objective data set characteristics and subjective personal criteria for the analysis of the different data sets.

Institutions: University of Toronto, University of Toronto, University of Regina.

Phenotypes are determined by a complex series of physical (e.g. protein-protein) and functional (e.g. gene-gene or genetic) interactions (GI)1. While physical interactions can indicate which bacterial proteins are associated as complexes, they do not necessarily reveal pathway-level functional relationships1. GI screens, in which the growth of double mutants bearing two deleted or inactivated genes is measured and compared to the corresponding single mutants, can illuminate epistatic dependencies between loci and hence provide a means to query and discover novel functional relationships2. Large-scale GI maps have been reported for eukaryotic organisms like yeast3-7, but GI information remains sparse for prokaryotes8, which hinders the functional annotation of bacterial genomes. To this end, we and others have developed high-throughput quantitative bacterial GI screening methods9, 10.
Here, we present the key steps required to perform quantitative E. coli Synthetic Genetic Array (eSGA) screening procedure on a genome-scale9, using natural bacterial conjugation and homologous recombination to systemically generate and measure the fitness of large numbers of double mutants in a colony array format. Briefly, a robot is used to transfer, through conjugation, chloramphenicol (Cm) - marked mutant alleles from engineered Hfr (High frequency of recombination) 'donor strains' into an ordered array of kanamycin (Kan) - marked F- recipient strains. Typically, we use loss-of-function single mutants bearing non-essential gene deletions (e.g. the 'Keio' collection11) and essential gene hypomorphic mutations (i.e. alleles conferring reduced protein expression, stability, or activity9, 12, 13) to query the functional associations of non-essential and essential genes, respectively. After conjugation and ensuing genetic exchange mediated by homologous recombination, the resulting double mutants are selected on solid medium containing both antibiotics. After outgrowth, the plates are digitally imaged and colony sizes are quantitatively scored using an in-house automated image processing system14. GIs are revealed when the growth rate of a double mutant is either significantly better or worse than expected9. Aggravating (or negative) GIs often result between loss-of-function mutations in pairs of genes from compensatory pathways that impinge on the same essential process2. Here, the loss of a single gene is buffered, such that either single mutant is viable. However, the loss of both pathways is deleterious and results in synthetic lethality or sickness (i.e. slow growth). Conversely, alleviating (or positive) interactions can occur between genes in the same pathway or protein complex2 as the deletion of either gene alone is often sufficient to perturb the normal function of the pathway or complex such that additional perturbations do not reduce activity, and hence growth, further. Overall, systematically identifying and analyzing GI networks can provide unbiased, global maps of the functional relationships between large numbers of genes, from which pathway-level information missed by other approaches can be inferred9.

In Vitro Reconstitution of Light-harvesting Complexes of Plants and Green Algae

Authors: Alberto Natali, Laura M. Roy, Roberta Croce.

Institutions: VU University Amsterdam.

In plants and green algae, light is captured by the light-harvesting complexes (LHCs), a family of integral membrane proteins that coordinate chlorophylls and carotenoids. In vivo, these proteins are folded with pigments to form complexes which are inserted in the thylakoid membrane of the chloroplast. The high similarity in the chemical and physical properties of the members of the family, together with the fact that they can easily lose pigments during isolation, makes their purification in a native state challenging. An alternative approach to obtain homogeneous preparations of LHCs was developed by Plumley and Schmidt in 19871, who showed that it was possible to reconstitute these complexes in vitro starting from purified pigments and unfolded apoproteins, resulting in complexes with properties very similar to that of native complexes. This opened the way to the use of bacterial expressed recombinant proteins for in vitro reconstitution. The reconstitution method is powerful for various reasons: (1) pure preparations of individual complexes can be obtained, (2) pigment composition can be controlled to assess their contribution to structure and function, (3) recombinant proteins can be mutated to study the functional role of the individual residues (e.g., pigment binding sites) or protein domain (e.g., protein-protein interaction, folding). This method has been optimized in several laboratories and applied to most of the light-harvesting complexes. The protocol described here details the method of reconstituting light-harvesting complexes in vitro currently used in our laboratory,and examples describing applications of the method are provided.

Research in proteomics has exploded in recent years with advances in mass spectrometry capabilities that have led to the characterization of numerous proteomes, including those from viruses, bacteria, and yeast. In comparison, analysis of the human proteome lags behind, partially due to the sheer number of proteins which must be studied, but also the complexity of networks and interactions these present. To specifically address the challenges of understanding the human proteome, we have developed HaloTag technology for protein isolation, particularly strong for isolation of multiprotein complexes and allowing more efficient capture of weak or transient interactions and/or proteins in low abundance. HaloTag is a genetically encoded protein fusion tag, designed for covalent, specific, and rapid immobilization or labelling of proteins with various ligands. Leveraging these properties, numerous applications for mammalian cells were developed to characterize protein function and here we present methodologies including: protein pull-downs used for discovery of novel interactions or functional assays, and cellular localization. We find significant advantages in the speed, specificity, and covalent capture of fusion proteins to surfaces for proteomic analysis as compared to other traditional non-covalent approaches. We demonstrate these and the broad utility of the technology using two important epigenetic proteins as examples, the human bromodomain protein BRD4, and histone deacetylase HDAC1. These examples demonstrate the power of this technology in enabling the discovery of novel interactions and characterizing cellular localization in eukaryotes, which will together further understanding of human functional proteomics.

Institutions: University of Münster, Carnegie Institution for Science.

The introduced protocol provides a tool for the analysis of multiprotein complexes in the thylakoid membrane, by revealing insights into complex composition under different conditions. In this protocol the approach is demonstrated by comparing the composition of the protein complex responsible for cyclic electron flow (CEF) in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, isolated from genetically different strains. The procedure comprises the isolation of thylakoid membranes, followed by their separation into multiprotein complexes by sucrose density gradient centrifugation, SDS-PAGE, immunodetection and comparative, quantitative mass spectrometry (MS) based on differential metabolic labeling (14N/15N) of the analyzed strains. Detergent solubilized thylakoid membranes are loaded on sucrose density gradients at equal chlorophyll concentration. After ultracentrifugation, the gradients are separated into fractions, which are analyzed by mass-spectrometry based on equal volume. This approach allows the investigation of the composition within the gradient fractions and moreover to analyze the migration behavior of different proteins, especially focusing on ANR1, CAS, and PGRL1. Furthermore, this method is demonstrated by confirming the results with immunoblotting and additionally by supporting the findings from previous studies (the identification and PSI-dependent migration of proteins that were previously described to be part of the CEF-supercomplex such as PGRL1, FNR, and cyt f). Notably, this approach is applicable to address a broad range of questions for which this protocol can be adopted and e.g. used for comparative analyses of multiprotein complex composition isolated from distinct environmental conditions.

Institutions: Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Membrane trafficking involves transport of proteins from the plasma membrane to the cell interior (i.e. endocytosis) followed by trafficking to lysosomes for degradation or to the plasma membrane for recycling. The cell based L-glutathione protection assays can be used to study endocytosis and recycling of protein receptors, channels, transporters, and adhesion molecules localized at the cell surface. The endocytic assay requires labeling of cell surface proteins with a cell membrane impermeable biotin containing a disulfide bond and the N-hydroxysuccinimide (NHS) ester at 4 ºC - a temperature at which membrane trafficking does not occur. Endocytosis of biotinylated plasma membrane proteins is induced by incubation at 37 ºC. Next, the temperature is decreased again to 4 ºC to stop endocytic trafficking and the disulfide bond in biotin covalently attached to proteins that have remained at the plasma membrane is reduced with L-glutathione. At this point, only proteins that were endocytosed remain protected from L-glutathione and thus remain biotinylated. After cell lysis, biotinylated proteins are isolated with streptavidin agarose, eluted from agarose, and the biotinylated protein of interest is detected by western blotting. During the recycling assay, after biotinylation cells are incubated at 37 °C to load endocytic vesicles with biotinylated proteins and the disulfide bond in biotin covalently attached to proteins remaining at the plasma membrane is reduced with L-glutathione at 4 ºC as in the endocytic assay. Next, cells are incubated again at 37 °C to allow biotinylated proteins from endocytic vesicles to recycle to the plasma membrane. Cells are then incubated at 4 ºC, and the disulfide bond in biotin attached to proteins that recycled to the plasma membranes is reduced with L-glutathione. The biotinylated proteins protected from L-glutathione are those that did not recycle to the plasma membrane.

INO80 chromatin remodeling complexes regulate nucleosome dynamics and DNA accessibility by catalyzing ATP-dependent nucleosome remodeling. Human INO80 complexes consist of 14 protein subunits including Ino80, a SNF2-like ATPase, which serves both as the catalytic subunit and the scaffold for assembly of the complexes. Functions of the other subunits and the mechanisms by which they contribute to the INO80 complex's chromatin remodeling activity remain poorly understood, in part due to the challenge of generating INO80 subassemblies in human cells or heterologous expression systems. This JOVE protocol describes a procedure that allows purification of human INO80 chromatin remodeling subcomplexes that are lacking a subunit or a subset of subunits. N-terminally FLAG epitope tagged Ino80 cDNA are stably introduced into human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293 cell lines using Flp-mediated recombination. In the event that a subset of subunits of the INO80 complex is to be deleted, one expresses instead mutant Ino80 proteins that lack the platform needed for assembly of those subunits. In the event an individual subunit is to be depleted, one transfects siRNAs targeting this subunit into an HEK 293 cell line stably expressing FLAG tagged Ino80 ATPase. Nuclear extracts are prepared, and FLAG immunoprecipitation is performed to enrich protein fractions containing Ino80 derivatives. The compositions of purified INO80 subcomplexes can then be analyzed using methods such as immunoblotting, silver staining, and mass spectrometry. The INO80 and INO80 subcomplexes generated according to this protocol can be further analyzed using various biochemical assays, which are described in the accompanying JOVE protocol. The methods described here can be adapted for studies of the structural and functional properties of any mammalian multi-subunit chromatin remodeling and modifying complexes.

Assays based on Bioluminescence Resonance Energy Transfer (BRET) provide a sensitive and reliable means to monitor protein-protein interactions in live cells. BRET is the non-radiative transfer of energy from a 'donor' luciferase enzyme to an 'acceptor' fluorescent protein. In the most common configuration of this assay, the donor is Renilla reniformis luciferase and the acceptor is Yellow Fluorescent Protein (YFP). Because the efficiency of energy transfer is strongly distance-dependent, observation of the BRET phenomenon requires that the donor and acceptor be in close proximity. To test for an interaction between two proteins of interest in cultured mammalian cells, one protein is expressed as a fusion with luciferase and the second as a fusion with YFP. An interaction between the two proteins of interest may bring the donor and acceptor sufficiently close for energy transfer to occur. Compared to other techniques for investigating protein-protein interactions, the BRET assay is sensitive, requires little hands-on time and few reagents, and is able to detect interactions which are weak, transient, or dependent on the biochemical environment found within a live cell. It is therefore an ideal approach for confirming putative interactions suggested by yeast two-hybrid or mass spectrometry proteomics studies, and in addition it is well-suited for mapping interacting regions, assessing the effect of post-translational modifications on protein-protein interactions, and evaluating the impact of mutations identified in patient DNA.

Institutions: Russian Academy of Sciences, Federal Research Center of Pediatric Hematology, Oncology and Immunology, Moscow, Russia, University of Pennsylvania.

Microtubule depolymerization can provide force to transport different protein complexes and protein-coated beads in vitro. The underlying mechanisms are thought to play a vital role in the microtubule-dependent chromosome motions during cell division, but the relevant proteins and their exact roles are ill-defined. Thus, there is a growing need to develop assays with which to study such motility in vitro using purified components and defined biochemical milieu. Microtubules, however, are inherently unstable polymers; their switching between growth and shortening is stochastic and difficult to control. The protocols we describe here take advantage of the segmented microtubules that are made with the photoablatable stabilizing caps. Depolymerization of such segmented microtubules can be triggered with high temporal and spatial resolution, thereby assisting studies of motility at the disassembling microtubule ends. This technique can be used to carry out a quantitative analysis of the number of molecules in the fluorescently-labeled protein complexes, which move processively with dynamic microtubule ends. To optimize a signal-to-noise ratio in this and other quantitative fluorescent assays, coverslips should be treated to reduce nonspecific absorption of soluble fluorescently-labeled proteins. Detailed protocols are provided to take into account the unevenness of fluorescent illumination, and determine the intensity of a single fluorophore using equidistant Gaussian fit. Finally, we describe the use of segmented microtubules to study microtubule-dependent motions of the protein-coated microbeads, providing insights into the ability of different motor and nonmotor proteins to couple microtubule depolymerization to processive cargo motion.

Full insight into the mechanisms of living cells can be achieved only by investigating the key processes that elicit and direct events at a cellular level. To date the shear complexity of biological systems has caused precise single-molecule experimentation to be far too demanding, instead focusing on studies of single systems using relatively crude bulk ensemble-average measurements. However, many important processes occur in the living cell at the level of just one or a few molecules; ensemble measurements generally mask the stochastic and heterogeneous nature of these events. Here, using advanced optical microscopy and analytical image analysis tools we demonstrate how to monitor proteins within a single living bacterial cell to a precision of single molecules and how we can observe dynamics within molecular complexes in functioning biological machines. The techniques are directly relevant physiologically. They are minimally-perturbative and non-invasive to the biological sample under study and are fully attuned for investigations in living material, features not readily available to other single-molecule approaches of biophysics. In addition, the biological specimens studied all produce fluorescently-tagged protein at levels which are almost identical to the unmodified cell strains ("genomic encoding"), as opposed to the more common but less ideal approach for generating significantly more protein than would occur naturally ('plasmid expression'). Thus, the actual biological samples which will be investigated are significantly closer to the natural organisms, and therefore the observations more relevant to real physiological processes.

Actin Co-Sedimentation Assay; for the Analysis of Protein Binding to F-Actin

Authors: Jyoti Srivastava, Diane Barber.

Institutions: University of California, San Francisco - UCSF.

The actin cytoskeleton within the cell is a network of actin filaments that allows the movement of cells and cellular processes, and that generates tension and helps maintains cellular shape. Although the actin cytoskeleton is a rigid structure, it is a dynamic structure that is constantly remodeling. A number of proteins can bind to the actin cytoskeleton. The binding of a particular protein to F-actin is often desired to support cell biological observations or to further understand dynamic processes due to remodeling of the actin cytoskeleton. The actin co-sedimentation assay is an in vitro assay routinely used to analyze the binding of specific proteins or protein domains with F-actin. The basic principles of the assay involve an incubation of the protein of interest (full length or domain of) with F-actin, ultracentrifugation step to pellet F-actin and analysis of the protein co-sedimenting with F-actin. Actin co-sedimentation assays can be designed accordingly to measure actin binding affinities and in competition assays.

Nuclear membrane assembly is an essential step in the cell division cycle; this process can be replicated in the test tube by combining Xenopus sperm chromatin, cytosol, and light membrane fractions. Complete nuclei are formed, including nuclear membranes with pore complexes, and these reconstituted nuclei are capable of normal nuclear processes.

JoVE Visualize is a tool created to match the last 5 years of PubMed publications to methods in JoVE's video library.

How does it work?

We use abstracts found on PubMed and match them to JoVE videos to create a list of 10 to 30 related methods videos.

Video X seems to be unrelated to Abstract Y...

In developing our video relationships, we compare around 5 million PubMed articles to our library of over 4,500 methods videos. In some cases the language used in the PubMed abstracts makes matching that content to a JoVE video difficult. In other cases, there happens not to be any content in our video library that is relevant to the topic of a given abstract. In these cases, our algorithms are trying their best to display videos with relevant content, which can sometimes result in matched videos with only a slight relation.